Being Thankful...A Little Bit Late

You know, I have to admit, I haven’t been being very thankful. It’s been a rough several weeks with cultural adjustment, teaching, team, self – pretty much everything. I’ve done a lot of thinking about all the things I’m not thankful for and all the parts of my life I don’t like right now. It’s so easy to think of those things.

Today I was teaching my students about Thanksgiving, telling them why we celebrate it and encouraging them to think of different things or people they were thankful for. I told them that sometimes when everything in life seems bad, it is good to remember all the things for which we can be thankful. Occasionally when I teach I actually listen to what I’m saying, and today I was convicted. Even though I keep talking about giving thanks, I haven’t been doing it at all. So tonight I decided to sit down and make a list. Sometimes expressing thanks can sound so cliché and cheesy, like a hallmark card, but I decided to share a few things with you anyway.
I’m really thankful for…

*Friends who keep in touch even though I’m far away and who listen to me even though I gripe a lot.
*Chinese friends who have accepted me even though I’m a clueless foreigner.
*Students who love me and make me feel good about myself.
*Students who don’t love me and keep me humble.
*Books in English
* Parents who love me enough to let me go.
*Letters, packages, and e-mails that are always really encouraging!
*Being able to have three sisters and tons of fun memories.
*Skype! Being able to talk to family and friends for free.
*Being healthy enough to come to China.
*Hot water and a heater.
*My time at Asbury.
*Experienced teammates who can answer all my questions.
*Faith not based on feelings.
*Being raised to realize that it's okay to be different (cause in China I sure am).
*Teachers and professors who have been great teachers even when I haven't been a great student.
*Coffee.
*Those who have gone before and can offer strength and hope and encouragement.
*Grandparents who support me.
*Friendships with other teachers who are experiencing the same joys and frustrations and triumphs and difficulties.
*The ability to laugh at things I don’t understand.
*Everlasting love not dependent on my brains or strength or skill or goodness or lack-thereof.

What Have You Got To Be Thankful For?

So after all my long journeying (it seems long), I am back in home-sweet-home Yangzhou. It was really great to get away for a bit, although traveling in unfamiliar places seems to bring all the cultural and language barriers back to the forefront. There are different kinds of stresses involved in traveling in China. To name a few…
1) Very little privacy on a sleeper full of Chinese people wanting to stare at you.
2) Interesting accommodations: the hotels were nice (including the BRIGHT orange towels), but the trains were a little less comfortable, thanks to the glaring lights and blaring music.
3) And I have to mention the squatties. They have a grab bar in front so you don’t lose your balance on the moving train. Much appreciated. The last thing you would want to do is in any way touch the floor, which gets pretty gross by the end of 21 hours. The squatty is basically a hole out the bottom of the train – you can actually look down and see the tracks underneath. Word of advice: Never walk on train tracks in China.
4) Lots of time on trains and buses: Loud, crowded, and filled with smoke. How do more people not die of lung cancer?
5) Lots of confusion: because nothing goes according to plans. And (most of us) can’t read street signs and bus schedules. And even if you can, it might not help. So you walk. A lot. And ride buses. For a long time.

We were in Xian for less than 36 hours, but we were able to see the world-famous Terra Cotta warriors. There’s a bunch of them. It tends to be a bit of a let-down to see something really famous because of course you can never get as close as the world-famous photographs. My favorite part was taking pictures, and I put a few of them up on flickr.

On Thanksgiving Day, we visited the “Temple of Thanksgiving.” We didn’t realize beforehand that was what it was called in English, but I must say it was quite fitting. There was a 7-story tower you could climb and look out over Xian. We also got to see the old city wall several times as we careened through in city buses. Overall, the traffic in Xian was amazingly orderly (they even stopped at red lights!), but we did have the worst bus driver I’ve yet experienced. Yikes. We also saw the Bell Tower when we were wandering around the city looking for a bus. Plus we experienced a whole lot of the Xian train station.

Our train to Xian was 13 hours but the train back was 21 hours. That’s just how it works. This one stopped really often and gave us a little scenic tour of the countryside. So our Thanksgiving dinner was cheese and crackers on a 21 hour train ride from Xian. I must admit, I was a bit envious thinking of all of you back in America.

On Friday we came in from Xian and spent the weekend with other teachers in the region. There were about 30 teachers overall. Much as I love my teammates, I had been looking forward to time with other foreigners. It was kind of overwhelming at first, though! Once I got over the initial shock of so many foreigners, I had a really good time. I knew some of the people from training and met some fun others. We ate together (including a western-style Thanksgiving meal), played games, and had some good fellowship time. It was good to hear about the struggles and encouragements and lessons of others. It was good to laugh a lot and be sarcastic and joke about the idiosyncrasies of living in China. I came back with some good memories and quotes and private jokes that wouldn’t be nearly as funny if I tried to tell you about them.

I can’t say it was the best Thanksgiving ever or the easiest. Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays, and it was interesting being in a country where it doesn’t exist. Of course, my students were excited to learn about Thanksgiving and I was able to get together with other teachers to celebrate, but it didn’t exist in the sense that I’ve always known it. I guess because of all the traveling and the holidays I was reminded of the difficulties of living in China. While Yangzhou is starting to feel familiar, other places are still very foreign. So in a way it was hard. But I was finally able to get past my ingratitude and selfish expectations and remember the point of the holiday. If I could sum up what I’ve been learning this week, I keep being reminded: “It’s not about me.” It was a time of confronting my own selfish desires and refocusing my attention on the greatness of the Father. Through his grace we are able to “give thanks in all circumstances,” not grudgingly and not in spite of circumstances, but because of his goodness.

“Praise the L, O my soul;
all my inmost being, praise his holy name
Praise the L, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits”
Psalm 103

Random, Quite Random

If you know me very well, you probably know that I can be kind of random. So here’s a bunch of random, completely unrelated thoughts and observations...

- Should I be disturbed that I am starting to feel at home in a country in which I don’t even know how to say the colors?

- Sometimes old Chinese men wear big, dark glasses and when they stare at you they look just like the Godfather. Scary, I know.

- A group of my students got 2nd place at a school-wide English short-play competition. I feel like a proud parent.

- Yesterday Christina and I made this amazing pre-Thanksgiving dinner. Admittedly, it was good. And it was southern: BBQ chicken, sweet potatoes, peas, angel biscuits, pumpkin pie, and sweet tea. The biscuits were a little weird (no shortening in China), but the sweet potatoes were almost as good as when my aunt Kay makes them.

- The best part of Thanksgiving is after the meal and the hour of washing dishes when you settle back with coffee and another piece of pumpkin pie. I’ll miss that.

- I think living in China has made me more confident. For one thing, when almost every person who walks by you gives you the stare-down, you have to learn to just stare back.

- I think I’m more self-conscious and less self-conscious at the same time. I realize that people are watching me every where I go. I also realize that I can do pretty much whatever I want and it gets chalked off to being a crazy foreigner.

- Tip of the day: Bubble-wrap works great for sealing holes in walls.

- Whereas I think, “it would be sweet to have a dryer,” my students are awed and amazed that I have a washing machine. They wish they didn’t have to wash clothes by hand.

- I think that when I go back to America I’ll be really confused about being in a country where you can drink water from the sink and flush toilet paper and wear shoes inside.

- I’m going to Xian (think terra-cotta warriors) this week, and I’m not sure who is more excited: me, or my students when I told them about it!

When You Walk

This verse was brought to me this morning as an encouragement.

“Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name;
You are mine.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you.

When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned;
The flames will not set you ablaze.”
(Isaiah 43:1-2)

It struck me that in each of the verses it does not say “if” but “when.” When you pass through the waters—because you will. Life is hard. If we count on that and expect it, the rivers and flames will not surprise us. But we don’t have to fear it. In the midst of the fire, if we take a moment to forget about the flames we see all around us, we will notice that we aren’t getting burned.

A Word about Strength

Excerpts from an Amy Carmichael poem I was reading today which challenged me to ask not for an easier life but for a stronger self.

From [thought] that asks that I may be
Sheltered from winds that beat on Thee,
From fearing when I should aspire,
From faltering when I should climb higher,
From silken self, O Captain, free
Thy soldier who would follow Thee.

Give me love that leads the way
Faith that nothing can dismay,
The hope no disappointments tire,
The passion that will burn like fire...

Adjusting

One of my teammate’s mom is visiting. This is the first time she’s been to China, and it’s interesting to try to look back and see things from her perspective. It seems like ages ago that I was walking on the streets for the first time, marveling at all the crazy things to see. Was it really only 3 and ½ months ago?

While I’m still constantly adjusting and adapting and learning to deal with a new culture, I am amazed to think about the things I already have gotten used to. For example, the incessant noises of China have grown quieter in my ears. I don’t notice the bus driver honking every 15 seconds to warn a taxi or motorist or bicycle or pedestrian or dog he is coming through. The little carts still drive behind my house several times a day with their banging pots, squeaking announcements, or shrill tunes, but it doesn’t generally register in my conscious mind. I rarely want to scream at students who are yelling outside my window early in the morning. I don’t mind the loudspeaker announcements too much unless I am trying to play music (the loudspeaker always wins).

And some situations that don’t baffle me as much. I’m not afraid to make left turns on my bicycle because I’ve finally figured out the left-turn arrow. It used to look like chaos and free-for-all, and now I realize that it is – you just have to claim your right of way and dodge the buses. I’ve learned that if a vested lady is guarding the bicycle parking lot, you pay her 2 mao. I know where to make copies and can communicate just enough that I’m not afraid of it any more. I almost don’t notice the stares and gasps and pointing as much. Almost.

When I was sitting in my bedroom today, I realized my apartment felt like home. It is as comfortable and familiar as my accommodations in the US (only it’s bigger and colder). I feel settled. When I travel, I think I will experience the discomfort of leaving and the warmth of returning home.

The neighbors still shoot off fireworks every few days that sound like war has broken out inside my apartment. That still gives me a headache. Some days I still come to class and find out none of the students have the copies that were supposed to be made for them, and I have to quickly change half my lesson. I still get annoyed. I still get grossed out at seeing people blowing their noses onto the ground. And I still have no clue what the cute old lady is trying to say to me, but thinking back, it’s amazing how far I’ve come!

Who is an American?

By guest writer, Christina Kelso. Christina is my teammate who has been in China for 5 years. She teaches sophmore and junior students a class about Western history and culture. She also graduated from Asbury College. :)

Who is an American?
This is a question that my students and I tried to answer last week in class. As the students are sophomore and junior English majors, I felt they would have picked up some basics on how to tackle this question but the more I delved into it, the more I kept coming against a brick wall.

I started by asking my students to discuss a sub-question for a couple of minutes with a partner: How would you describe an American? (appearance, characteristics, values, beliefs) Now I realize that this is not an easy question to answer concretely or maybe even at all—and that was exactly my purpose in this exercise. When the time was up, I asked my students to tell me what they discussed. What about appearance? Most students replied that Americans had blonde hair and blue eyes. The ironic part is that they say this as they are looking at me with my dark brown hair and brown eyes. In their defense many of them do not consider me to be truly American because my mother is Chinese. Yet am I not still American? I mention this to them and they laugh, then correct themselves and say that Americans have all colors. Someone usually also points out that Americans are all tall. Again I ask them if I’m tall (I’m not quite 5’4”). They again laugh and correct the statement to say American boys are tall. I ask if Tom Cruise is American and if he is tall? Again, laughter.

I feel I’m making my point that you can’t pinpoint exactly what Americans look like, so we move on to the other categories. For characteristics and values, they seem to be a little closer in things that would describe many Americans—independent, active, open-minded, and valuing privacy, individualism, and money. In beliefs, they said most Americans are Christians. Which lead to a discussion between “believing in the existence of” and “believing in.”

These students have had at least 3 different American foreign teachers in the college experience. So after we have discussed how to answer the question and how hard it is to answer, I ask them if their 3 teachers were similar. Most of them say, “No, very different.” I remarked that to answer the question, “Who is an American?” is impossible because Americans have come from all over the world for many different reasons and have mixed together to form what is called the United States of America.

To end this section, I put up a PowerPoint slide with pictures of different Americans and tell the students there is one person pictured who is not American and ask them to choose who it is, keeping in mind all the things we had just talked about. Most of the students automatically pick out the Japanese-American man, the Chinese-American lady, the Mexican-American girl, the Eskimo woman, and the African-American boy. After again reminding them of what we talked about, I ask the students to choose their top 3 guesses—they usually chose the Japanese-American, the Chinese-American and the Mexican-American. I tell them that they were all wrong. These three all are American, in fact the Japanese man’s family have been in America longer than any of my family line—apart from some very, very, very distant relatives who fought in the Civil War. I point out the girl who is not American. She has blonde hair and blue eyes (she’s from Norway). All the students start exclaiming that it was impossible, it was a trick because there was no way they would know that.
I smiled and say, “Exactly.”

Happy Singles Day

I am excited to announce that today is Singles Day in China! That’s right, not Singles Awareness Day (aka Valentines), but a day celebrating all those singles out there. I knew this country was smart! I don’t know much about it except it has to do with all the 1’s in 11/11. In honor of this blessed day, Christina (the other single of the team) and I compiled a list entitled “The Advantages of Being Single.” I have to say, the married couples were able to add a number of ideas as well. J

1. You can choose your own curtain designs.
2. In fact, you can decorate your whole apartment however you want.
3. You only have half the grocery bags.
4. And you don’t have to buy diapers.
5. You can sprawl out over the whole bed.
6. You get to hog your own covers.
7. You can watch all the girly movies you want.
8. Making and eating real meals are not necessary.
9. You can eat the whole carton of ice cream.
10. There’s just a lot less sharing in general.
11. You can live at your own pace.
12. For example, no one is waiting at the door while you finish your conversation.
13. And you don’t have to wait around at the ping-pong outfitter or sports-shoe store.
14. You don’t have to shave in the winter.
15. You can spend your $ however you want.
16. There’s no in-laws.
17. You can have alone time practically whenever you want.
18. No one complains that you haven’t washed the dishes.
19. You don’t have to let someone know before you go out or rush to be back by a certain time.
20. You never have to “check with your husband.”

Granted, they’re all kind of selfish reasons, but we enjoy them. J It’s not always fun being alone in a foreign land, but today we would like to celebrate our singleness. America needs a holiday like this.

(Christina and I are happy and carefree. The couples are sad and wish they could celebrate too. :)

Play Competition

Six of my junior girls have been working on a short English play for a school-wide competition. They have come over to my apartment several times in the past month or so to practice and get help with pronunciation and grammar. One of the girls wrote the play.

It is about a girl who has a heart disease and is sad because she is not able to do all the things she wants. One night, an angel and a demon come to her in a dream. The demon convinces her to sell her soul for one night of health and freedom. She is happy for her wish to finally come true, but she realizes that morning will bring her death. She mourns the choice she has made because she realizes she could have lived a full life, even with the illness. The playwright wrote partly from personal experience – she has had three heart surgeries and feels the limitations of her body.

This afternoon the play competition was held on our campus. 26 different campuses of Yangzhou University were participating in the competition. The girls spent the afternoon at my apartment practicing and preparing. I was a bit concerned when I went to watch them perform because they said there were about 40 groups performing. The contest started at 4pm and would probably last for about five hours. I really didn’t want to sit through five hours of plays. Fortunately, my students’ performance was only about an hour into the contest.

It was interesting to see the other performances before theirs. Many of them involved dancing to or singing “popular” American music, which was pretty funny. Even though the plays were in English, the themes were decidedly Chinese. In one play students were visited by a video game character who made them realize the importance of focusing on studies. I think almost every play mentioned the CET-4, the standardized English test that all the students have to pass. Most at least touched on the importance of dedication to family and obedience to parents.

One play talked about a girl whose family were poor farmers working very hard to pay for her college education. She felt out of place among her peers because she was the only one without a mobile phone, so she wrote her family saying she really needed a computer for school. When they sent money she went and bought a mobile phone so she could fit in, but then she found out that her father had worked so hard he was very ill. She rushed home very guilty and repentant, and her family was shocked at her frivolous purchase they had worked so hard for.

I thought the play was interesting, but then I realized that one of the judges and several observers were wiping tears from their eyes. To me it was interesting, but I guess to other people it was real life. I realized that even though they were speaking the language I can understand, I was as far as ever from really understanding Chinese life.

Trying to Explain

Sometimes it’s difficult to explain the things that are hard about living in China. I feel separated by people not so much by distance or time but by experiences. I can describe what happens to me – the funny stories, the sad thoughts, the interesting and intriguing parts of life – but it never seems quite adequate. It’s like sitting down to draw a picture of the most beautiful person you’ve ever seen and ending up with a smiley-faced stick figure.

I hear the muffled voices of students as they walk past my apartment, and sometimes I think that I understand what they are saying. It seems like I should understand—if I could just hear them a little more clearly—it seems like they are speaking English. But of course they aren’t, and even if I could hear I wouldn’t understand.

My life here falls into routine and seems quite normal to me. But sometimes all of a sudden I realize I am in China. What am I doing in China? How did I get here and whose life am I living? Six months ago I was still a college student; how can life change so completely so quickly?

My students are constantly asking questions about America and what it is like. It seems like I’m always talking about America, but only in the general sense. Whenever I actually think about America – not just the country and culture but my America – it is always a startlingly clear picture that catches me off guard. I remember that right about now there would be Canadian geese flying over. I can picture standing outside in the dusky fall evening and looking through the brown and yellow leaves and hearing their noise. I can tell students about Canadian geese, but they can’t understand that Canadian geese remind me of everything I love about autumn.

If you’ve never been in a place where 1.3 billion people look the same and you look different, how can you understand what it’s like to see another foreigner? Occasionally I do see another foreigner, and I stare at them as much as the Chinese. It doesn’t much matter where they are from: Germany or Australia or Ghana. In China there are only two kinds of people: Chinese and foreigners. It’s hard to understand what that’s like when even in Snellville, Georgia, you can walk into a store and see Caucasians from every racial background, Hispanics, African-Americans, Indians, Asian-Americans, Africans, and Middle-Easterners. Everyone had different colored hair and different clothes and even different languages. In a country where 1.3 billion people have black hair (okay, a few dye their hair, but mostly), even medium brown hair stands out.

And then too, sometimes it’s hard to explain how much little moments mean. When your apartment is crowded with students who are laughing and talking and being themselves because they are comfortable around you. When a student says, “We may have language barriers, but we have warm hearts.” When a student doesn’t ask, “Do you like China? Do you like sports?” but instead asks, “Do you feel a generation gap between you and your parents? Do you feel lonely sometimes?” You realize that for a moment they are not seeing you as a foreigner or an American or an English machine but just as a person.

Today in class we were talking about apologies and forgiveness. I told my students the story about the son who left his father and brought shame upon his family by wasting all his inheritance. When I told about how the father was able to forgive his son because he loved him so much, several of the students had tears in their eyes. And I thought, wow. I’m really glad to be here.

"A duck in my backpack"

Okay, here is my story from today. Last night one of my students called and said she wanted to bring some food over for us to eat lunch together today. She said she would bring some famous food from her hometown. Today she was very excited in class and said that she and a couple of friends (other students of mine) would meet me after class.

After class I met them in the hall. “I have brought a duck!” She said, patting her bag, “I have a duck in my backpack!” As I stare at her in amazement, my thoughts start flying.

A duck. She has a duck in her backpack. I should start a list of sentences I never expect to hear. She has had a duck in her backpack for 4 hours of class! I’ve seen big slabs of meat sitting out on the side of the road, left in the open air all day, and my first thought is, “Oh God, don’t let us die!” I try to picture the duck that she is cradling in her backpack. Does it still have the head and feet? Will we have to pluck the feathers off? Who knows.

We rode the bus back to the main campus and she talked about duck all the way. Picture the scene in Forest Gump related to shrimp. No, not quite that much, but it was still funny. When we stopped at a restaurant to get rice, she pulled out the duck to show me. “See, it is sealed so no air gets in. It can keep for eight hours.” Okay, I feel better about that. Plus, I find out the duck is already cooked. We just have to bring it back to the apartment to chop it up. We pull out the cleaver and my students set to work. In the end several plates are piled with duck meat (and duck bones and neck and head – but no feet or feathers!) The meat was really good, and I don’t think I’ll die. I also don’t think I’ll forget her standing in the door of the classroom saying, “I have a duck! I have a duck in my backpack!”